Reflections
by Chibi-Shibi
Summary: Neville reflecting on his realisation about the war. WARNINGS FOR SUICIDAL THEMES.


**WARNING FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS AND ATTEMPTS**

**For the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Pride of Portree, Chaser 3.**

**Main Prompt: Neville Longbottom dies in the war**

**Optional Prompts: (word) reflection, (setting) Astronomy Tower, (word) impact**

**TGS Through the Universe: Irregular Satellite — (character) Neville Longbottom**

**TGS Ollivander's Wand Shop: 8–9 inch: Write about a Gryffindor character.**

**Word Count: ~1040**

**I wanted to talk about the traumatic effects of the War during the war, rather than the PTSD route as most fiics seem to go. I wanted to capture the hopelessness and constant misery someone whose life largely revolves around the War might feel.**

* * *

Neville stood quietly, watching everything going on below him. From a distance, it looked as though tiny insects were attacking each other in the grounds of the old castle.

The Astronomy tower, however, was mostly quiet, aside from the occasional extremely loud scream or shriek that came from below. It was also deserted, except for Neville himself. He preferred to be alone, really, although a part of him felt very guilty at running away from the battlefield.

But he supposed that was what he always had been: a coward. Killing Nagini changed none of that. In fact, it was after killing the snake that he had realised what he had done, and it had horrified him. He, at eighteen, was fighting a war whose winner would determine the future of thousands, if not millions of people. The whole battle was unfolding like a picture.

A picture he had seen, in fact. It was an old Muggle painting his grandmother had shown him once, long ago. She had told him a story about it, about how it had been a reflection of the times then, how the artist hadn't made anything up in his imagination. Even at that young age, Neville had noticed something odd. Everyone in the painting looked sad. The younger version of him had not understood.

'_Don't they like what they're doing, Grandma? They all look so sad!'_

'_They like the idea they're fighting for, dear. But they don't like killing other people. It makes them sad.'_

And now, he was one of those figures on a canvas. He was one of the little men who looked miserable and yet kept going, driven by some sense of a delayed reward for what they were doing. Perhaps he was the man in the corner who looked on, horrified and sorrowful, while his brothers and sisters fought.

'_Why did the artist draw so many men?'_

'_Because a few wouldn't be enough. Many more men than this canvas can hold die in wars. Wars are a symbol of how hateful humanity can be.'_

The words had had such a significant impact on him that this was precisely what he had lived by after that. He had always wanted to be proof that humanity could be something aside from terrible, like that painting would have it portrayed as. He didn't understand why anyone, least of all him, would want to be that miserable, and yet, years later, that was precisely what he was doing.

He hadn't slept in weeks, knowing that the war would be upon them soon. Running the DA had taken a lot out of him, and now his face looked sallow and withdrawn, perhaps also from the little food he had allowed himself to take over the past few days. He had, in short, gotten completely consumed by the war, and the general gloomy aura it came with.

'_The worst thing you can do to a young child,'_ he thought to himself, eyes never leaving the scene that felt like a real-life replica of the painting he remembered, '_is take away his dreams. Isn't that what I am doing to my younger self? All I wanted was for this, precisely this, to never happen.'_

If the painting had been a reflection, then this war, it was the other side of the mirror. Neville preferred the painting. It hurt him less. It hurt his friends less. It didn't kill as many people.

'_I want to be on the other side of the mirror again,' _he told himself, as the images of the many people whose lives had been cut short because of the war, flashed through his mind. He thought of the Gryffindors, who had run to the front to try and defend Hogwarts, now lying dead in the ruins of the castle. He remembered the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, trying their best to help the cause they believed in, now injured mortally, and some even gone, forever. He recalled the Slytherins, a lot of them misjudged and unnecessarily outcast, who defied all expectations to lay down their lives, some against their own parents.

Tears began to well up in his eyes as he reminisced about the former Order members, some long-dead, to this war that had lasted, covertly or otherwise, for all of his life, his own parents among them. Every time the image of Frank and Alice Longbottom, virtually chained to those ugly hospital beds came to his mind, he told himself how the painting had been wrong. The painting had shown him the blood and the physical pain and the sheer magnitude of the harm, but it had not told him about those who had lost their lives without losing them. '_Had any of those people in military uniforms,'_ he wondered, '_ever had a normal life again? Had they ever slept another night without nightmares? Had they ever felt safe and happy?'_

And while he knew that the answer to all those questions was a 'perhaps', or a 'time heals all,' or something that wasn't entirely a 'no', he chose to believe it was in the negative anyway. He couldn't stand it anymore, the thought of a possibly endless war. Even if it did end, he knew it would be years, if not lifetimes before something like pureblood supremacy was completely wiped from the minds of all wizards. Every attempt to do so would lead to another war.

Yes, his grandmother had been right. The painter had been right. The younger version of himself had been right. Humanity was miserable. _He_ was miserable. He would rather not be and, as far as he could see, there was only one way to achieve that. He wondered if it would make a difference to the others. He hoped so. He hoped one more life, this time, willingly taken, would be enough to convince at least the Light Side, if not everyone, that it was not worth it, for a little more power, for a little more promised happiness that would likely never come anyone other than a select few.

Neville Longbottom had always wanted to be happy.

Neville Longbottom had wanted to make an impact on the Wizarding World.

Neville Longbottom jumped from the Astronomy Tower on 2nd May 1998.


End file.
